Review - Ninja Reflex

Well, I was looking forward to this one, since I likes the old Nintendo and Kirby reflex games. But unfortunately, this didn’t live up to my hopes. There was a ninja theme, but not really a reflex theme. Really this was just another collection of minigames. One, a firefly game, had to do with reflexes, but there were so many that you could just keep clicking, no reflexes necessary.

I figured this would be a good group or party game, so I loaded it up ready for some competitive reflex action with friends, but it ended up being disappointing. Several games were hard to figure out and didn’t have a intuitive feel. Now, I say several, but I don’t want you to get confused, Ninja Reflex only has a handful of games, and their replay value is close to zero. This is from the guy who thought pushing the ‘A’ button when “DRAW!” apperead on the screen in that old Nintendo NES reflex game had a ton of replay value.

There just wasn’t the proper sense of competition in the game. Maybe if there had been some sort of tournament feature where players would compete in many round events that would have helped. Another problem is that most of the games weren’t anymore reflex oriented than your typical speed related game. So instead of reflex games, they were just boring minigames or the normal sort.

A real disappointment, I imagined that they could do some cool things integrating reflex and the Wiimote. It looks like they tried, they had a game where ninjas were attacking you and you had to move the Wii mote to block and slash, but that just didn’t do it. Something wasn’t right, the game wasn’t polished correctly. I just didn’t enjoy it and it was pretty much a flop with my friends and we switched to Big Brain Academy.

All in all, trying to keep my disappointment out of the rating, I give it 4 of 10. This probably won’t live up to your expectations either, so I just don’t think it is worth shelling out $40 for. It has an average rating of about 60%, so I’m a little low. But for the most part, no one is saying this is a great game. There is still a big enough selection of Wii games that we don’t need to stoop to Ninja Reflex. Maybe someone will make a reflex game right (although the obvious ninja theme has been taken, darn.)

They could have put more time into this. A few more games, a few good competitive modes and better polish on the “what am I doing” signals, and this could have been a pretty good game. As is though, it is pretty boring, and doesn’t have much in the gameplay department. Developers need to take the Wii more seriously, or stop complaining that their games aren’t selling. Cause - Effect, figure it out. It isn’t that hard. “Boo hoo, only Nintendo games sell.” That would be because their games are actually worth something.

Tags: wii, no more heros, lego star wars, super mario galaxy, wii news